The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt Read online

  That was my house.

  * * *

  Lafayette Park was alive with the scampering of squirrels, the warbling of birds, the long looks of lovers. I saw none of it. The one thing I knew for certain was that I had not opened that Riggs account. Why would someone say that I had? A practical joke?

  I felt a chill up my spine.

  Then I got scared. The twentieth of August was two weeks before the attempt on Roosevelt’s life, if that is what it was. Meaning it happened before Theodore even asked me to investigate. Someone was out to get me. Or tease me. Or hold this in reserve against me. Who? And for what unearthly purpose?

  I shook my head fiercely and uttered a one-syllable word that caused a lady in a saucy hat to clench her parasol.

  I was heading home, although I was needed at the office. Instead of either, I knocked on Henry’s door. He was in, and at work (on whatever it was), but was pleased to be disturbed, if I would kindly wait a minute or two, which I did. Henry’s foyer was simple and spartan but as fascinating as most men’s craniums, and more exotic, what with its teak umbrella stand from Siam and the carved wooden mask with its nose pointed like a stalactite. On the wall was a black-framed photograph of Chartres. I assumed it was Clover’s—she had been accomplished at the art—but I had never dared ask.

  I was marveling at the splendor of the steeples when the familiar breathy voice said, “Phallic, yes?”

  I doubled over in laughter. Other than a lady’s ankles, I had never heard Henry refer openly to anything below the waist. The man was sixty-four; it was time.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Pointy, and two steeples. I can see you’re having a difficult day.”

  “Sometimes the words won’t flow.”

  “What words are those?” I pried.

  “Words. Flimsy things.”

  Instead of taking a stroll, I looked for an empty bench in the park. I found one by the new statue of General de Rochambeau, in the corner nearest the White House West Wing. Henry had a quizzical look, as if he expected a flogging for someone else’s crime.

  A woman ambled by, leashed to a poodle that stopped at every shrub to sniff. I had perfected the practice of speaking under my breath, so that only one person could hear. If that person wasn’t hard of hearing, which Henry was.

  “My epiphany!” I said. I told him about David Pratt and the likelihood of his guilt. By a process of elimination, bolstered by a cashier’s check and life insurance. “He wanted the job—that’s what Cortelyou says.”

  “For more than one reason, perhaps.”

  “Including money, apparently.”

  “Often suspected as a motivator of men,” Henry drawled.

  “In this case, a total of ten thousand dollars. For a man who is dying.”

  Henry rocked back on the bench and said, “In … what … sense … dying?”

  “In the usual sense.” I lowered my voice and named the dreaded disease.

  “I see,” Henry said.

  “There is more,” I said. I described the bank account at Riggs on which the cashier’s check had been drawn, opened with a bogus name and address. “Mine! This was before the collision. Before I ever got involved in this. What on earth do you make of that?”

  Henry stared into his lap, lost in thought. At last he looked up and shook his head. “I wish I could help you,” he said.

  * * *

  Clara and I were halfway through the pheasant when James tiptoed in and told me that someone was waiting. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Or wanting to see anyone.

  “A Mr. Flather,” James said.

  Damn! Was I about to be arrested? I had assumed—assumed!—that peril had passed.

  “Excuse me, dear,” I said, wondering when I would see her again. My stomach heaved.

  I followed James to the front hall and was relieved to find the timid bank clerk. “Oh, Mr. Flather, what can I do for you?” I gushed. “Please come with me. We can join my wife. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Er, no,” he said. “I mean, no thank you, Mr. Hay … Mr. Secre— I don’t want to … Please forgive me … sir. I waited ’til dark.” He glanced back at the door.

  “Let’s try the library,” I said. “Coffee?”

  “Oh no, sir. I can’t stay long.”

  I nodded at James and said, “Please tell Mrs. Hay.”

  The electric lamp beside my chair made the cranes look alive and ready to swoop. My preferred Mr. Flather squirmed in the red plush chair. If he had rehearsed what he wanted to say, it was lost to him now.

  “Take your time,” I said. “Why did you wait until dark?”

  “Not to see Mr.— So he wouldn’t see…”

  “Mr. Glover,” I said. My neighbor; his boss.

  Flather’s head bobbed, and kept bobbing, as he struggled to say something that was building inside him. It rose out of his scrawny chest and exploded into the stuffy air: “It was me!”

  “What was you?”

  “I handled it. Opened the account. With the … wrong … false … name and address. I know I…”

  Now I understood why he didn’t want Glover to know.

  “Did you check on his identity?” I said.

  His eyes went wide, like a guilty child asserting his innocence. “I took his word for it.”

  “I can understand,” I said, almost truthfully. “Can you describe … him?” I exhaled with what I hoped was unnoticed relief.

  “Yes, him … I can’t rightly recall. It was weeks ago, and I see dozens of people a day. I half remember a funny little man—not handsome, not ugly, well, a little bit ugly—who insisted on using his own pen. A smooth little number it was.”

  “Whiskers?”

  He squinted, trying to recall. “I guess so. Yes. A full beard, rather like yours.”

  “Hair color?”

  A puzzled look. “He kept his hat on. I’d forgotten. I thought it was odd at the time.”

  “How did he pay? Do you remember that? Five thousand dollars is a lot of greenbacks.”

  “That I do remember. It was cash, all of it cash. Fifty-dollar bills, the new ones, with Sherman.” That was John Sherman, Lizzie’s uncle, the former secretary of state. “I remember because I counted them out.”

  He seemed out of breath and rose to leave. “You know, you’re not the only person to be asking about this,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “That’s really why I came here.” Flather had ceased being timid. “Last week sometime, we received a wire from a man who was interested in this particular transaction. He said he would come by, but he never showed up. He had an unusual name. A rodent of some kind.”

  “Turtle?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Not a … but, yes. I wouldn’t have told him much anyway, it being none of his business, you know. But as I say, he never showed up.”

  * * *

  Theodore had his nose in a book, literally, when I entered his sanctum. His legs were propped up on a hassock, the inevitable cup of coffee at his side.

  I knew he was aware of my presence because he raised a forefinger as he finished a page. He was reading The Virginian, the year’s best seller. “Listen to this,” he exclaimed, leafing back to the opening page. “For the first time I noticed a man who sat on the high gate of the corral looking on. The cowboys, you understand, were trying to break a wild pony. For he now climbed down with the undulations”—every syllable drawn out—“of a tiger, smooth and easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin. Beautiful, yes? This is life in the West as it was.”

  This was rank sentiment, of course. Everyone knew that cowboys were lowlifes who worked on a whim and spent too much time in saloons. They weren’t the novel’s silent, stoic, heroic figures that Theodore adored. No surprise that he did, considering that he had been one of those cowboys, despite his Tiffany’s bowie knife, gaining his brethren’s respect by knocking down a bully in a bar who had called him Four Eyes. Besides the fact that the novel’s author, Owen Wister, was his Harvard chum. Theodore was
as skilled as any politician in rearranging history to his liking. Maybe more so, being a historian himself.

  “You must read it,” he said.

  “I’ve started it,” I said. In truth, I had not made it past the dedication—To Theodore Roosevelt—with the (arse-kissing) “author’s changeless admiration.”

  “I need to ask you something,” I said.

  My tone must have betrayed me, because he laid the book in his lap and gave me his undivided attention. I felt privileged, as he no doubt intended.

  “The carriage driver in Pittsfield—David Pratt was his name. Do you remember him?”

  “Oh yes. Rather a tall fellow, a little on the ungainly side, I thought. Pleasant enough. Governor Crane’s man.”

  “Did he ask you to switch seats with the governor?”

  “I suppose he did. I didn’t think anything of it. I was fine where I was. Why do you ask?”

  “That would have put you right behind Mr. Craig.”

  “It would have.” He understood instantly what I meant. “But Murray Crane wasn’t hurt.”

  “True, true. But he might have been.”

  “Why don’t you ask the governor? He is still in the city, working with me on the coal strike. I have never known a more honorable man.”

  An impressive endorsement, given Theodore’s strict standards. “He is the one who told me,” I said. “There is also this.” I described the five thousand dollars sent to Pratt from a newly opened account at Riggs.

  “Whose account, do we know?” Theodore said.

  I appreciated the we. “The short answer is no.”

  “The longer answer?”

  “There’s a name on the account, but it isn’t the correct one,” I said. “It’s … mine.”

  Theodore burst out laughing. “You keep edging your way into this case, my dear Hay. One might almost think you had a vested interest.”

  “I keep telling you I shouldn’t be doing this. Even I can see the conflict of interest here.”

  “So you say. Except when you tell me you want to keep doing this.”

  “Well, I’m just trying to keep you—and me—out of trouble, physical or political. Or ethical,” I made sure to add. To Theodore, life was a morality play—his father’s gift (and burden). Anything that involved right and wrong was sure to entice him.

  * * *

  “Where is your … servant?” I said. I meant Frank Forney, the red-bearded Samson.

  “Back home,” Governor Crane replied. “Had to go.”

  Ichabod had answered his own door, even at twenty minutes past ten. His octagonal sitting room at the Willard was dimly lit, courtesy of the lamps along the avenue outside. He was still dressed for dinner. So was I.

  “I have a couple of additional questions,” I said.

  His stone face was probably the one he used in facing all of life’s annoyances.

  “One of them has to do with the Agricultural National Bank of Pittsfield,” I went on. “You are the president, are you not?”

  No reply.

  “Five thousand dollars was deposited into Mr. Pratt’s account at the bank—a new account. Deposited in cash. Would you know anything about this?”

  Governor Crane rocked back in the Queen Anne chair and, miraculously, moved his mouth. “I am the governor,” he affirmed. “That occupies all of my time.”

  I waited for him to tell me something I didn’t already know. In vain. My turn again.

  “My second question,” I said, “is about Mr. Pratt. How well do you know him?”

  “Years.”

  “What do know about him?”

  A quizzical look, as if to say, How much does anyone know about anyone?

  “Is he a good man, would you say?” Another vapid question. What did I want to know? It was this: Would he murder a president? Oh yes, that was a question sure to bring a candid response.

  I was flailing for what to ask next when Governor Crane snapped out of his trance and stated, in no uncertain terms, “Yes, he is a good man. A Christian man; a family man. He would do anything for his family. Anything.”

  “Including…? Actually, I have a third question. Do you know of anyone who would want to kill you? Maybe the president wasn’t the intended target.”

  Crane laughed. I am not sure I had ever seen that before. “I should hope so,” he said, “or I wouldn’t be much of a governor. But there are easier ways to kill me, if someone is so inclined. He needs merely to come to my office and make an appointment.”

  * * *

  Clara was asleep, and I awakened her to say good night. She didn’t seem to mind. She even managed a smile before her eyes closed again.

  I promised myself I would never give Lizzie Cameron another thought. I recognized I had promised this before. But this time I meant it. Clara was dear to me in a way that no one else has ever matched, or ever could. That I knew. If I knew anything at all—and I had learned a thing or two in my time—I knew that your good fortune must not be assumed. I was a lucky man to be worthy of her love. By Lincoln’s deathbed, I had learned that nothing was certain in life. But Clara’s devotion to me, and mine to her, came pretty damn close.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1902

  The note arrived at eight fourteen—I noticed because my pocket watch was dangling from the stool. Lindgren was venting his own marital frustrations on my hamstrings, which were as tight as piano wire. It was unlike James to interrupt me, unless he thought it was important. How he could tell, I never understood, but he could. The old butler had a preternatural sense of these things.

  I sat up at the edge of the table, unsure why I was trembling. The envelope was small—dainty, really. It was ivory colored with faint blue lines meandering through. The flap was unsealed, and I pulled out a page, folded over. The paper was cheap and rough, with wide lines, ragged along one edge, as if it had been ripped from a schoolchild’s pad.

  Six words. I read them twice and let the note flutter onto the floor.

  “Lovey is ours. Wait for word.”

  I vaulted off the table and grabbed my clothes. Without a word to Lindgren (or to anyone), I rushed from the house. Had I gotten Lizzie involved in this, or had she involved herself?

  I crossed diagonally through Lafayette Park and rushed east along Pennsylvania avenue to Fifteenth street, then turned back onto the avenue. I had walked this way thousands of times, no doubt, and the view never grew old. In the distance, the Capitol dome hovered over the street and below the clouds. I must have drawn stares—I had left without my hat, for the first time in memory—but I didn’t take the time to notice.

  I dashed across Fifteenth in front of a trolley whooshing by, armed with my irrational faith that all would be well.

  The Willard’s lobby was busy with railroad men and off-duty generals. The elevator stopped at nearly every floor. On the fifth floor, I rapped on the door to Lizzie’s suite. Light footsteps approached and the door swung open to reveal Nellie Bly.

  “Good morning, Mr. Hay,” she said with a lilt.

  “Where is Liz … Mrs. Cameron?” I said.

  “She went out, before I was up. She left a note, saying she’d be back. Would you care to come in?”

  “I got one, too,” I said, “but not from her.”

  I told her about mine, and we rushed out. The elevator operator had not seen her leave, nor had the desk clerk. I dispatched Nellie to ask the doorman. She needed no more than a minute before she fairly skipped back through the lobby and found me by the newspaper stand. “Two people killed in a train wreck,” I said. “Forty-two injured. In Ohio.”

  “Around back,” she replied. “The Willard livery. The driver’s name is Demetrios.”

  The livery stable fronted on F street, directly behind the hotel. The telephone was ringing, and men in black leather aprons were hitching horses to buggies of all kinds. It smelled of horseflesh and hay.

  Demetrios stood in the back, chomping on a hard roll. He was a strapping young
man with an open face, a shock of dark hair, and a hearty manner. I introduced Nellie and myself.

  “Whatcha want?” he said. He was speaking to me but gazing at Nellie.

  “About a passenger you just had. A lady.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  I slipped my wallet from my breast pocket and removed a dollar.

  “A lady and a gent,” Demetrios said, eyeing my wallet. Another dollar. What had happened to my bargaining skills?

  “Just one gent?”

  “Yeh, yeh. I done nottin’ wrong.”

  “I’m not saying you did. Can you describe him?”

  “A stupid-looking fella, le’ me tell ya. Not that he don’t got the brains. But that he’s the bloke you’d pick on, back o’ the pack, were you the sort. Which I’m not, le’ me tell ya. But he the type.”

  I said, “Tall? Short? Fat? Thin?”

  “Toward the tall; short to me. And slow. I could take ’im wit’ one hand.”

  A stab of pain—a memory of Del as a boy, failing to slip my playful punch, which glanced off his unblinking eye. “Whiskers?” I said.

  “Not a hair. Mebbe he couldn’t. A fat fuckin’ face.” He noticed Nellie again. “Pardon my French, ma’am.”

  “And the lady?” Nellie said, her head cocked, eyes steady.

  “She be quite a lady. The neck of a f— Of a giraffe. And the way she sashayed. She were mine, I’d knock her down a few. After … well … She some lady.”

  I couldn’t disagree. “Did she seem … unwilling to go with the gent?” I said.

  “Not so’s I could see. And I seen plenty of that. All seemed … how you say … hunky-dory.”

  I said, “Did they seem … close?”

  That made him think, which entailed a glance at the hayloft and a raggedy cough. “Wouldn’t say so,” he said. “I can tell that too.”

  I wasn’t proud of my sense of relief. “Where did you take them?” I said.